


IF ONLY

by CIARAN_JOURNAL



Category: Naruto
Genre: Eventual Romance, F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 07:15:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18027200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CIARAN_JOURNAL/pseuds/CIARAN_JOURNAL
Summary: Sasori dies twice in his life, and so does Sakura. But they are both reborn.





	IF ONLY

When she charges forwards with the might of a  _goddess_  and slams her fury into his poor excuse of a body, Sasori doesn't realise he's holding his breath and simply  _chokes_. 

Sasori growls immediately upon the brutal impact. She's too close for comfort—too close and too  _overwhelming_ like no one else is, and her touch feels awfully  _wrong_  to him—Sasori isn't especially fond of it, or entertains it ; yet, it's  _right_  somehow, like it's supposed to be nowhere but  _there_ ( according to some absurd theories of  _fate_  that only exists in fairy tales that he always finds _ridiculous_ at best ) ; Sasori winces at that particular realisation once reality punches senses into him and he reels back— _falls back_ , attempting pathetically to keep a safe distance from her destructive chakra outburst and fails ; she follows suit and closes in on him—doing her job and finishing what she's started,  _what he's started_ —Sasori almost wishes she didn't.

It dreads him and  _he dreads it_  all the more ; Sasori despises it.

He's prone to notice she smells metallically of blood provided the intimate proximity between them—his and her blood altogether that fuses into one _ungodly stench_ , and Chiyo's too from their previous battle, and ashes, and **death** —more and mostly of death when she is but an inch apart from him now, and it's  _entertaining_  to see  _she's_   _reeking of death like Death itself has come knocking on his door_ , Sasori remarks—that's probably one of the reasons why he has grown so accustomed to her presence after all, ( or it's the possibility of the odds that he has just taken up a nasty habit of incomprehensible masochism and Sasori would rather assume the former anyway ). The rest of the reasons are—he knows as much as  _Sakura knows,_ and there are a lot to be accounted for given the chance should he make it through this, Sasori muses ; but for now, _suicidal tendencies_  are creeping onto his broken spine like chains and clutches and he can't help the  _wretched grin_  that goes beyond self-destructiveness twisting his lips into deformation, like moths to flames,  _he's loving every seconds of this_ , though Sasori—as a notorious S-ranked criminal of the Akatsuki and a Suna missing-nin—is _fully_  and  _pointedly_  and  _painfully_  aware of how it's wrong to be like this, but when he thinks of it all and pieces everything together, that said  _everything_ , in fact, is a fucking **disaster** more or less: from the beginning of their twisted relationship to the end of their sick attraction that leads to..  _now_  ; this very moment of unforgiving memory that burns itself into his mentality with or without his consent—Sakura's fist tears through his core.

Sasori gags a bit. He looks at her for the first time and the perplexity of his stare betrays his pretence of detachment, he grunts from the back of his throat and he grasps her wrist, he doesn't move but she plunges it further into the last of his flesh as if to prevent the risk of unexpected outcomes, Sasori should have anticipated her course of action and he should have understood it and he shouldn't have felt pain like he does at present—But he did, and he certainly does physically and mentally. And it isn't exactly a  _pleasant_  sensation to get used to either, if he were to be honest—he is never great at enduring physical affliction ever since he was a pitiful genin-orphan nonetheless. Sasori recoils and marvels at how  _naturally_ he's acting human again when all he has done is to shred the last shed of his humanity away for the record ( and for his selfish purpose ), but that surprise doesn't last for more than another second when he jerks his wrist and drives one of his puppet's swords into her beating, human heart.  _She has always had a bleeding heart_ —Sakura stifles visibly under his chakra strings—it would be a shame to crush it into a pulp of nothingness at one jerk of his hand. Sasori waits. He doesn't say anything and neither does she—He doesn't know what to say under this sort of circumstances and he assumes she doesn't either, but he watches her still, watches her on ;  _curious_ ,  _inquisitive_ , dying to fathom a part of her as her neck slowly bends, and she, at last,  _looks at him_.

Her look though—it isn't something Sasori can discern logically. Nor can he comprehend the complexity of layers of emotions swirling underneath those shivering, bone-shatteringly fierce emeralds of her eyes. He is taken aback when she smiles at him, out of anything—possibly anything— _literally anything_  she could have thrown at him instead, in regards of their condition as  **it's either you or me**. Sasori won't lie, he'd be much more grateful and at ease if she has done those or straight out kills him like she was told, but she didn't, and that's a fact that _unnerves_ him terribly and _baffles_ him like nothing has before. 

 _He doesn't understand_.

Sakura's smile persists and Sasori grimaces as if it's plaguing him like  _toxins_  and  _drugs_  until her limbs give into the rapid spreading of sheer pain and poisonsinside her veins and she goes limp.He catches her— _she catches him_ , and he collapses too, kneeling on the scraped metals and splintered woods of the consequence of their fight and letting it sink into his dead muscles as much as it wants, Sasori is too  _dead_  to care, he focuses on Sakura, trying to sustain her chakra but there is none left to do it, he stirs, _she shivers_ , and there's something unidentifiable that grips his core tight when he can barely hear her breath.

He holds her where he is and he holds her like he's holding for dear life, his chin touches the slouched angle of her shoulder and he smothers himself with newfound  **pain**  and  **suffering**. She holds onto him desperately in return, her uneven sequence of respiration becomes faint sobbing and her blood and tears are painting his neck a glaring red, but Sasori savours in it—It's the least he can do for the both of them. Sasori muffles a murmur and the amber hues within his eyes dim when Sakura's have lost their light, he yanks the sword out of her and she retrieves her fist from him, blood spatters over them like a masterpiece and they are matching,  _perfect_  the way they are and the way they would be forevermore now. She leans into him, tender like a lover and it would have been  _romantic_  and he would have indulged it had it not been for the blood and the sweats she was bathing in and the toxins he was breathing in, she exhales into the base of his ear, and Sasori jolts, her voice that haunts him for the rest of his diminishing lifetime never sounds so  **agonising** before, "If only."

 _If only_ , she says, and he watches as her pulse ceases eternally.

 _If only_ , she says, and he cries for as long as his ruptured body allows him.

 


End file.
